Which story is your favorite and why? Do you prefer the stories set in China or California?
How are the notions of balance (yin and yang) and energy flow (feng shui) an important theme in the novel? Does the Chinese notion of balance and flow translate to the characters' lives in America?
The Joy Luck Club was written as a collection of short stories. Is the order important? Could this have been told as a single story? What would that change?
In your experience, does the book reinforce or shatter stereotypes of Chinese culture?
By telling a story from the perspective of Chinese immigrants and first-generation Americans, what does the book reveal about American culture?
Tan has said that she wishes to break from "the ghetto of ethnic literature." Does The Joy Luck Club cross from the ethnic to the universal?
Although June is not sure why her mother gives her the jade necklace, she assumes it's because of her humiliation by Waverly. Is she right?
How do the struggles of the daughters mirror the tragedies of their mothers? What does this suggest about the relationships between parents and children?
Ying-ying sees herself as both a tiger and a ghost. Why does she use these characterizations? How would Lena? How would they be different?
The "broken English" of the mothers is often more colorful than the "perfect English" of their daughters. How does the way the mothers choose to express themselves reflect their identities? What is lost in translation?
How do the mothers decide to use their mah jong winnings? Does this show assimilation? Why, or why not?
The ritual of mah jong is central to the story. What rituals do American women perform that reflect culture and identity?
"They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds 'joy luck' is not a word, it does not exist."
- Jing-mei "June" Woo in The Joy Luck Club
Research Domestic & Foreign Policy Issues - Popular Culture
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You will be divided into groups of three. Go to h__ttp://www.sascurriculumpathways.com__. Your QL# is 407. Using the web links provided, you will create a presentation on the 1960s in Google Docs that you will share with your group. Your presentation will cover the following topics:
domestic issues
U.S. foreign policy issues
an event from popular culture
Each group member will work on one of these topics. Share the presentation with me when finished.
(1) How has your family’s
history affected your life?
How will your life affect
your family’s history?
and (2) What does your
family dream of for you?
What do you want for
yourself? What happens
when these conflict?
The Joy Luck Club: Essay
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In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. parents always want what is best for their children regardless of culture or ethnicity. In The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, the parents express their parental methods upon their daughters. Children will all react differently to their parent's methods, as do Waverly and June, but both daughters still share a common resentment for their parents. It is shown in the The Joy Luck Club how parental methods expressed to children can be misinterpreted, thus influencing the child's behavior..
How can parents wishes for their children be misinterpreted, thus influencing a child’s behavior?
See Oct. 15 - November 2nd, 2012 Apexvs. Learning online Lesson on sidebar
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See Oct.15th - Nov. 2nd - Apexvs. Learning,left-side tabs, for additional interactive - online lessons with informal and formal assessments.
Before you read, it will be helpful to have some knowledge of certain words, concepts, time periods, and places that are referred to in the story.
Working in groups, find each of the following on the Internet. Share the results of your research with the rest of the class.
Requires knowledge of narrative plus incorporates new technology plus summarizing skills.
Joy Luck Club Assignment (Writing) Essay, Research & Performance
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1. June Woo begins the novel by explaining the “Joy Luck Club.” She watches the mothers and explains, “They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds ‘joy luck’ is not a word, it does not exist” (p. 41). Does the novel argue that certain cultural concepts, like “joy luck,” cannot be translated? If so, why? If not, why not? Or, could the failure to translate provide the momentum of the novel? Explain the role of language and/or translation in the novel.
2. Research the details and circumstances of women’s life in 1930’s China, examining both poor and wealthy families. Bring this research to your reading of the novel. How do the stories of the mothers relate to the actual historical realities? Use your research to explain why Tan chose to portray the mothers through their particular stories. Decide whether this portrayal (whether historically accurate or fictionalized) enhances the power of the novel.
3. Ask students to perform a scene from the novel, from 1930’s China or from 1960’s America. They should write the dialogue and take the parts of all characters. The characters may be from the book or imagined. The scene can be produced at a student assembly and include a discussion afterward.
Amy Tan was born February 19, 1952, in Oakland, California. Her parents shared some of the dark history fictionalized in The Joy Luck Club. Her mother, Daisy, was born to a wealthy family and left Shanghai and a disastrous marriage right before the Communist takeover in 1949. She was forced to leave behind her three daughters. Tan's father, John, a Baptist minister and electrical engineer, also fled the civil war in China. Tan and her two brothers were raised in Santa Clara, California.
Tan was a good student. At age eight, her treatment of the theme "What the Library Means to Me" won her a transistor radio and mention in the local newspaper. When Tan was fourteen, her brother Peter and her father died within seven months of each other, both from brain tumors. A neurosurgeon gave no explanation other than bad luck. This twin tragedy spurred Daisy Tan to hoist anchor and move the family to Switzerland. After they returned to California, Tan was ready for college, where she eschewed her mother's wish for her to study medicine and studied literature instead. She met her husband, Lou DeMattei, on a blind date in Oregon while enrolled in one of the seven undergraduate institutions she attended. Tan followed him to San Jose, California, where she later earned an MA in linguistics in 1973.
While Tan was a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, her best friend was murdered. Shocked by the event, Tan left school and started working with children as a language development consultant. Her love of reading reawakened in 1985, when she read many woman novelists for the first time, including Louise Erdrich and Maxine Hong Kingston. Tan settled into a lucrative business-writing career, but restlessness led her to a writing workshop. Her second story, "Waiting Between the Trees," was noticed by a literary agent.
Tan started The Joy Luck Club two years after her first trip to China with her mother in 1987, and she completed it in less than five months. The book stayed on the bestseller list for nine months and has been translated into thirty-six languages. Tan cowrote the screenplay for the 1993 movie, and she and her husband appear in the movie as guests at the opening dinner party. Besides writing, she tours with the benefit cover band the Rock Bottom Remainders, which includes fellow writers Stephen King, James McBride, and Matt Groening. Her fifth novel, Saving Fish from Drowning, was published in 2005. Tan lives in northern California with her husband and dogs, Bubba and Lilli.
An Interview with Amy Tan
On August 7, 2006, Dana Gioia, former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, interviewed Amy Tan at her home in Berkeley, California. An excerpt from their conversation follows. Dana Gioia: You were born in Oakland in a family where both parents had come from China. Were you raised bilingually? Amy Tan: Until the age of five, my parents spoke to me in Chinese or a combination of Chinese and English, but they didn't force me to speak Mandarin. In retrospect, this was sad, because they believed that my chance of doing well in America hinged on my fluency in English. Later, as an adult, I wanted to learn Chinese. Now I make an effort when I am with my sisters, who don't speak English that well. It's such a wonderful part of me that is coming back, to try and speak that language. DG: Would you explain the special symbolism of your title, The Joy Luck Club? AT: I don't think joy and luck are specific to Chinese culture. Everybody wants joy and luck, and we all have our different notions about from where that luck comes. Many Chinese stores and restaurants have the word "luck" in there. The idea is that, just by using the word "luck" in names of things, you can attract more of it. Our beliefs in luck are related to hope. Some people who are without almost any hope in a situation still cling to luck. DG: This is a great book about the American immigrant experience. Did you think about that theme consciously when writing the book? AT: If I thought about this at all, it was the immigrant experience according to my mother and father. This influenced the way I took their immigrant story-the things that I rejected, the things that I thought were American. The basic notion of this country is that with self-determination, you can create who you are. That, in turn, allows an amazing freedom to a writer, because freedom is also creativity. DG: Why is reading important? AT: In childhood, reading provided a refuge for me, especially during difficult times. It provided me with the idea that I could find an ending that was different from what was happening at the time. Imagination is the closest thing that we have to compassion and empathy. When you read about the life of another person, you are part of their life for that moment. This is so vital, especially today, when we have so much misunderstanding across cultures and even within our own communities. DG: What did you read as a child? AT: I read every fairy tale I could lay my hands on at the public library. It was a wonderful world to escape to. DG: Do you feel that your early love of fairy tales expressed itself inThe Joy Luck Club, or did you look on its content as realistic? AT: As a minister, my father told us many stories from the Bible that were like fairy tales. Those stories can reflect very strong beliefs that Christians have, but they also have all the qualities that are wonderful about fairy tales. Life is larger than we think it is. Certain events can happen that we don't understand, and we can take it as faith in a particular area, or as superstition, or as a fairy tale, or something else. It's wonderful to come to a situation and think that it can be all kinds of possibilities. I look at what's happened to me as a published writer and, sometimes, I think it's a fairy tale.
Level 5 Bridging Linguistic Complexity
• Rich descriptive discourse with complex sentences
• Cohesive and organized related ideas Language Form and Complexity
• Compound, complex grammatical constructions (e.g., multiple phrases and clauses)
• A broad range of sentence patterns characteristic of particular content areas Vocabulary Usage
• Technical and abstract content-area language, including content-specific collocations
• Words and expressions with shades of meaning across content areas
Level 4 Expanding Linguistic Complexity
• Connected discourse with a variety of sentences
• Expanded related idea Language Form and Complexity
• A variety of complex grammatical constructions (subject; predicate; prepositional phrases; gerunds/gerund phrases; infinitives)
• Sentence patterns characteristic of particular content areas (simple; compound; complex; compound/complex) Vocabulary Usage
• Specific and some technical content-area language (e-portfolio; Goggle docs; e-files; e-mail; haiku LMS)
• Words or expressions with multiple meanings across content areas (euphemisms, aphorisms, allusions, allegory, archetypes, symbolism; connotation; denotation; metaphors; figurative language)
WIDA Standards - Speaking and Writing
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Level 5 Bridging Linguistic Complexity
• Multiple, complex sentences
• Organized, cohesive, and coherent expression of ideas Language Form and Complexity
• A variety of grammatical structures matched to purpose
• A broad range of sentence patterns characteristic of particular content areas Vocabulary and Usage
• Technical and abstract content-area language, including content-specific collocations
• Words and expressions with shades of meaning across content areas Level 4 Expanding Linguistic Complexity
• Short, expanded, and some complex sentences
• Organized expression of ideas with emerging cohesion Language Form and Complexity
• A variety of grammatical structures
• Sentence patterns characteristic of particular content areas Vocabulary Usage
• Specific and some technical content-area language
• Words and expressions with expressive meaning through use of collocations and idioms across content areas
NC Common Core Standards - The Joy Luck Club
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READING: LITERATURE GRADES 9-10 KEY IDEAS AND DETAILS
RL.9-10.1. Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text saysexplicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
Comprehension Check questions
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Note-Taking and Summarizing activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Standards Focus activities
RL.9-10.2. Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
Activating Prior Knowledge/Theme activities
Comprehension Check questions
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Note-Taking and Summarizing activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Standards Focus activities
RL.9-10.3. Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.
Activating Prior Knowledge/Theme activities
Comprehension Check questions
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Standards Focus activities
CRAFT AND STRUCTURE
RL.9-10.4. Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone).
RL.9-10.5. Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery,tension, or surprise.
Comprehension Check questions
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Plot Map activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Prior Knowledge/Theme activities
Standards Focus activities
INTEGRATION OF KNOW LEDGE AND IDEAS
RL.9-10.9. Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work. (Mythology)
Allusions/Terminology
Author Biography - Amy Tan
Comprehension Check questions
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Prior Knowledge/Theme activities
RANGE OF READING AND LEVEL OF TEXT COMPLEXITY
RL.9-10.10. By the end of grade 10, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and
poems, at the high end of the grades 9–10 text complexity band independently and proficiently.
WRITING GRADES 9-10
PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF WRITING
W.9-10.4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
W.9-10.5. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or tryinga new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience.
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
W.9-10.6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically.
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
RESEARCH TO BUILD AND PRESENT KNOWLEDGE
W.9-10.7. Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate;synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject underinvestigation.
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
W.9-10.8. Gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources, using advanced searches effectively; assess the usefulness of each source in answering the research question; integrate information into the text selectively to maintain the flow of ideas, avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
RANGE OF WRITING
W.9-10.10. Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) andshorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences.
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
SPEAKING & LISTENING GRADES 9-10 COMPREHENSION AND COLLABORATION
SL.9-10.1. Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, ingroups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9–10 topics, texts, and issues, building onothers’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
Prior Knowledge/Theme activities
Comprehension Check questions
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
PRESENTATION OF KNOW LEDGE AND IDEAS
SL.9-10.4. Present information, findings, and supporting evidence clearly, concisely, and logicallysuch that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and task.
Prior Knowledge/Theme activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
SL.9-10.5. Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactiveelements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to addinterest.
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
SL.9-10.6. Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and tasks, demonstrating command of formalEnglish when indicated or appropriate.
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Language
GRADES 9-10 CONVENTIONS OF STANDARD ENGLISH
L.9-10.1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage whenwriting or speaking.
Assessment Preparation activities
Comprehension Check questions
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Genre and Elements of Literature activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Prior Knowledge/Theme activities
Standards Focus activities
L.9-10.2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation,and spelling when writing.
Assessment Preparation activities
Comprehension Check questions
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Genre and Elements of Literature activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Prior Knowledge/Theme activities
Standards Focus activities
KNOW LEDGE OF LANGUAGE
L.9-10.3. Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, tomake effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.
Assessment Preparation activities
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Standards Focus activities
VOCABULARY ACQUISITION AND USE
L.9-10.4. Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on GR AGES 9–10 RE ADING AND CONTENT, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies. Common Core Standards Alignment—The Joy Luck Club Literature Guide; Grades 10-12
Assessment Preparation activities
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Standards Focus activities
L.9-10.5. Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.
Assessment Preparation activities
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Standards Focus activities
L.9-10.6. Acquire and use accurately general academic and domain-specific words and phrases, sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at the college and career readiness level; demonstrate independence in gathering vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression.
Allusions/Terminology
Assessment Preparation activities
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Genre and Elements of Literature activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Standards Focus activities
NCTE Standards
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. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and non-print texts.
7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and non-print texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.
8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
9. Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles.
10. Students whose first language is not English make use of their first language to develop competency in the English language arts and to develop understanding of content across the curriculum.
11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).
Which story is your favorite and why? Do you prefer the stories set in China or California?
How are the notions of balance (yin and yang) and energy flow (feng shui) an important theme in the novel? Does the Chinese notion of balance and flow translate to the characters' lives in America?
The Joy Luck Club was written as a collection of short stories. Is the order important? Could this have been told as a single story? What would that change?
In your experience, does the book reinforce or shatter stereotypes of Chinese culture?
By telling a story from the perspective of Chinese immigrants and first-generation Americans, what does the book reveal about American culture?
Tan has said that she wishes to break from "the ghetto of ethnic literature." Does The Joy Luck Club cross from the ethnic to the universal?
Although June is not sure why her mother gives her the jade necklace, she assumes it's because of her humiliation by Waverly. Is she right?
How do the struggles of the daughters mirror the tragedies of their mothers? What does this suggest about the relationships between parents and children?
Ying-ying sees herself as both a tiger and a ghost. Why does she use these characterizations? How would Lena? How would they be different?
The "broken English" of the mothers is often more colorful than the "perfect English" of their daughters. How does the way the mothers choose to express themselves reflect their identities? What is lost in translation?
How do the mothers decide to use their mah jong winnings? Does this show assimilation? Why, or why not?
The ritual of mah jong is central to the story. What rituals do American women perform that reflect culture and identity?
"They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds 'joy luck' is not a word, it does not exist."
- Jing-mei "June" Woo in The Joy Luck Club
Suyuan's story is told through her daughter. She was forced to leave her twin babies on the road in China while fleeing the Japanese invasion.
Jing-mei "June" Woo
June is a sensitive child whose mother wants her to become a piano prodigy. After learning the truth about her mother's past, she travels to China to find her lost sisters.
An-mei Hsu
At age nine, An-mei joins her widowed mother, who is exiled as a rich man's fourth wife. Her mother commits suicide. In the U.S., An-mei questions her faith when her youngest son drowns.
Rose Hsu Jordan
Timid Rose is overwhelmed by American choices, but she finds conviction in the midst of a bewildering divorce.
Lindo Jong
As a child, Lindo outwits her mother-in-law to escape her arranged marriage. Later, she brags about her American-born daughter but also longs for Waverly to notice their similarities.
Waverly Jong
A chess champion as a child, Waverly grows up to become a successful tax attorney. She worries about her mother's opinion of her white fiancé.
Ying-ying St. Clair
When her philandering husband dies, Ying-ying leaves her wealthy family and starts over as a shopgirl. She marries an American merchant and emigrates but suffers from episodes of depression as an adult.
Lena St. Clair
Generous Lena shares her mother's powers of intuition but remains powerless to act on them. The prickly division of household expenses reveals the impoverishment of her marriage.
Headshot of Amy Tan, 2003
Amy Tan, 2003 (Copyright Robert Foothorap)
Black and white street shot of San Francisco's Chinatown
San Francisco's Chinatown, 1945 (Bettmann/Corbis)
8-year-old Amy Tan with 5 contestants in background
8-year-old Amy Tan wins essay contest, Santa Rosa, CA, 1960 (Courtesy of Amy Tan) Click on the word film below to see the video clips. ==Films==
Historical Context
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The Joy Luck Club
Reader's Guide - Historical Context
The Life and Times of Amy Tan
1920s
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forms, 1921.
Chiang Kai-shek unites the Nationalists, 1928. 1930s
The Long March helps Mao Tse-tung consolidate power, 1934-35.
Japan launches a full-scale war with China, 1937.
Nanking, the newly established capital of China, falls to Japan, December 13, 1937. 1940s
Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. China and America form an alliance, 1941.
The People's Republic of China is established. Daisy Tan boards the last boat out of Shanghai safely, 1949. 1950s
Socialist realism becomes the popular artistic form, deemed most appropriate for the new republic in China.
Amy Tan is born in Oakland, California, 1952. 1960s
Chairman Mao Zedong launches the Cultural Revolution. Bourgeoisie values and an older generation of artists and intellectuals are attacked and killed.
Amy Tan wins her first writing contest, 1960.
Tan family moves to Montreux, Switzerland, 1968. 1970s
Nixon is the first U.S. president to visit China, 1972.
Maxine Hong Kingston publishes The Woman Warrior, 1975.
Mao Zedong's death ends the Cultural Revolution; the "Gang of Four" take the fall for its chaos, 1977.
Diplomatic ties established between China and America, 1979. 1980s
Maya Lin's design for Vietnam Veterans Memorial is chosen by an NEA-funded design competition, 1981.
Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, the first feature film to show the Forbidden City, wins nine Oscars, 1987.
The Joy Luck Club is published, 1989. 1990s
Breakthrough decade for Chinese-American fiction and movies. Tan publishes four more books.
Amy Tan's essay "Mother Tongue" is chosen for Best American Essays, 1991.
The Joy Luck Club, cowritten by Amy Tan and Ronald Bass, is released as a feature film, 1993. 2000s
Sagwa becomes a PBS cartoon series for children, based on Tan's book, Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat, 2000.
Tan's fifth novel, Saving Fish from Drowning, is published, 2005. World War II and San Francisco 's Chinatown
The War
The Joy Luck Club is set in two places: China in the 1930s and 1940s and San Francisco's Chinatown from the 1960s through the 1980s. Since Chinatown was a haven within an isolated country, the experiences of Tan's fictionalized daughters differ sharply from their mothers' generation, which was displaced by war. The turn of the twentieth century hailed massive upheavals for China, with the end of the Imperial dynastic system and the opening of China to global influences. These changes led to civil wars between the Nationalists and the Communists. The leader of the Nationalist Party, or the Kuomintang, was Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao Tse-tung led the Communist Party. The Long March, a 6,000-mile-long retreat of the Red Army in 1934-35, enabled Mao to consolidate his power. (Survivors of the march are heroes to this day.) The Chinese peasantry was lifted by Mao's doctrine, which encouraged his soldiers to "not take a single needle or a piece of thread from the masses"-masses often terrorized by the nationalist Kuomintang. The Nationalists, who were armed with the need to combat Western hegemony, clashed with the Communists, who were strengthened by their appeal for the many rural poor. These two groups formed fragile alliances to fight a guerilla war against waves of Japanese invaders in the 1930s. Although few in number, the Japanese gained control of major Chinese cities and coasts. As the United States entered World War II in 1941, the marriage of convenience between the Kuomintang and Communists against Japan was falling apart. The U.S. backed the Nationalists, although corruption among Kuomintang generals diverted supplies and information to the Japanese. This corruption and political instability, coupled with the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, drove many Chinese to emigrate. The Neighborhood
These Chinese took the already well-worn route to California, which to this day retains the largest Chinese population in the United States. The Chinese still refer to San Francisco as "Old Gold Mountain," because the first wave of émigrés had come through the Port of San Francisco at the start of the Gold Rush. They had formed tight networks and built "Little Shanghai," because exclusionary laws made it difficult for Asian immigrants to assimilate or gain citizenship. For decades the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 had limited imported labor. The World War II alliance between China and the United States became instrumental in repealing this and other exclusionary laws. The immigrant population slowly shifted from male sojourners to permanent citizens. Even though racial bias persisted in immigration law until at least 1965, families thrived in Chinatown, with its familiar Chinese customs, food, and merchandise. By the 1960s Chinatown's seedy intrigue existed only in movies, and it became an alluring tourist destination-an exotic island of a different culture in the middle of a major American city, complete with temples, fortune cookie factories, and, of course, Chinese restaurants. The famous Chinatown gate went up in 1970. Nine years later, diplomatic ties were reestablished between the two countries, making it easier for Chinese-American families to reunite.
ReadWriteThink Connections - Write a Narrative
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READWRITETHINK CONNECTION Lisa Storm Fink, RWT
In the essay “Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan explains that she “began to write stories using all the Englishes I grew up with.” How these “different Englishes” or even a language other than English contribute to identity is a crucial issue for adolescents. In “Exploring Language and Identity: Amy Tan’s ‘Mother Tongue’ and Beyond,” students explore this issue by brainstorming the different languages they use in speaking and writing, and when and where these languages are appropriate. Students write in journals about a time when someone made an assumption about them based on their use of language, and they share their writing with the class. Students then read and discuss Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue.” Finally, students write a literacy narrative describing two different languages they use and when and where they use these languages.http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/exploring-language-identity-mother-910.html
Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club was written as a collection of short stories, but the tales of memory, fate, and self-discovery interlock to create a colorful mural that reads like a novel. All four sections open with a Chinese fable, then shift to the stories of four pairs of mothers and daughters. The tone switches from mundane to magical to darkly humorous. The tales, particularly those set in China, are by turns beautiful and harrowing. The first story begins two months after Jing-mei "June" Woo loses her mother, Suyuan, to a brain aneurysm. Her mother's best friends-June's "aunties"-invite June to take Suyuan's place at their mah jong table so she can sit at the East, "where everything begins." Suyuan Woo had invented the original Joy Luck Club in China, before the Japanese invaded the city of Kweilin. They had used the group to help shield themselves from the harshness of war. As they feasted on whatever they could find, they transformed their stories of hardship into ones of good fortune. After Suyuan reaches the United States, she resurrects the Joy Luck Club with three other Chinese émigrés, and the four reinvent themselves in San Francisco 's Chinatown. These four mothers hope the mix of "American circumstances with Chinese character" will give their daughters better lives. In each section of the novel, June recounts her late mother's fantastic tales on evenings after "every bowl had been washed and the Formica table had been wiped down twice." Every time Suyuan tells her daughter about Kweilin, she invents a new ending. But one night she reveals the real ending-how she lost her twin daughters while fleeing the Japanese invasion: "Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies." After her mother's death, June realizes that she had not fully understood her mother's past or her intentions. She journeys to China to discover what her mother had lost there. She is feverish to find out who she is, where she came from, and what future she can create-so she can finally join the Joy Luck Club.
There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and fruitfully. Here's the way I do it:
Underlining (or highlighting): of major points, of important or forceful statements.
Vertical lines at the margin: to emphasize a statement already underlined.
Star, asterisk, or other doo-dad at the margin: to be used sparingly, to emphasize the ten or twenty most important statements in the book. (You may want to fold the bottom comer of each page on which you use such marks. It won't hurt the sturdy paper on which most modern books are printed, and you will be able take the book off the shelf at any time and, by opening it at the folded-corner page, refresh your recollection of the book.)
Numbers in the margin: to indicate the sequence of points the author makes in developing a single argument.
Numbers of other pages in the margin: to indicate where else in the book the author made points relevant to the point marked; to tie up the ideas in a book, which, though they may be separated by many pages, belong together.
Circling or highlighting of key words or phrases.
Writing in the margin, or at the top or bottom of the page, for the sake of: recording questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raised in your mind; reducing a complicated discussion to a simple statement; recording the sequence of major points right through the books. I use the end-papers at the back of the book to make a personal index of the author's points in the order of their appearance.
The Joy Luck Club
P11GR002.pdf
Joy Luck Club Calendar Lesson.htm
http://education.library.ubc.ca/files/2011/06/11JoyLuckClub.pdf
http://education.library.ubc.ca/files/2011/06/11JoyLuckClub.pdf
http://www.neabigread.org/books/joyluckclub/joyluck07_links.php
The Joy Luck Club
Discussion Questions
"They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds 'joy luck' is not a word, it does not exist."
- Jing-mei "June" Woo in The Joy Luck Club
Analysis an Author's Evidence.doc
You will be divided into groups of three. Go to h__ttp://www.sascurriculumpathways.com__. Your QL# is 407. Using the web links provided, you will create a presentation on the 1960s in Google Docs that you will share with your group. Your presentation will cover the following topics:
- domestic issues
- U.S. foreign policy issues
- an event from popular culture
Each group member will work on one of these topics. Share the presentation with me when finished.Revise projects:
Read the __excerpt from__ //__The Right Stuf__f//. Write a paragraph that summarizes it. Respond to __images of the Hubble telescope__.
Write an essay that argues for or against the Space Program, using specific sources.
(1) How has your family’s
history affected your life?
How will your life affect
your family’s history?
and (2) What does your
family dream of for you?
What do you want for
yourself? What happens
when these conflict?
In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. parents always want what is best for their children regardless of culture or ethnicity. In The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, the parents express their parental methods upon their daughters. Children will all react differently to their parent's methods, as do Waverly and June, but both daughters still share a common resentment for their parents. It is shown in the The Joy Luck Club how parental methods expressed to children can be misinterpreted, thus influencing the child's behavior..
How can parents wishes for their children be misinterpreted, thus influencing a child’s behavior?
See Oct.15th - Nov. 2nd - Apexvs. Learning, left-side tabs, for additional interactive - online lessons with informal and formal assessments.
Films Click
http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/EJ/1015-may2012/EJ1015Joy.pdf
•Choose three words that describe the feeling in this painting.
•What do you think is happening in this scene?
•What part of the picture was your eye drawn to first?
•How did the colors in the painting make you feel?
•What about the lines and curves?
•If this were a scene from a story, what kind of story would it be?
•What do you think is the most important object in this picture?
http://www.freegames.ws/games/boardgames/mahjong/freemahjong.htm
__http://www.mahjongg.com/winds.htm__
http://acme.highpoint.edu/~john7004/The%20Joy%20Luck%20Club.ppt
http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/72-38/72-38.HTM
http://sanfrancisco.mobi/map/place/333834
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_cookie
Before you read, it will be helpful to have some knowledge of certain words, concepts, time periods, and places that are referred to in the story.
Working in groups, find each of the following on the Internet. Share the results of your research with the rest of the class.
DAY ONEFOCUS: Biography
Day One Lesson Plan [PDF]
DAY TWO
FOCUS: Culture and History
Day Two Lesson Plan [PDF]
DAY THREE
FOCUS: Narrative and Point of View
Day Three Lesson Plan [PDF]
DAY FOUR
FOCUS: Characters
Day Four Lesson Plan [PDF]
DAY FIVE
FOCUS: Figurative Language
Day Five Lesson Plan [PDF]
DAY SIX
FOCUS: Symbols
Day Six Lesson Plan [PDF]
DAY SEVEN
FOCUS: Character Development
Day Seven Lesson Plan [PDF]
DAY EIGHT
FOCUS: The Plot Unfolds
Day Eight Lesson Plan [PDF]
DAY NINE
FOCUS: Themes of the Novel
Day Nine Lesson Plan [PDF]
DAY TEN
FOCUS: What Makes a Book Great?
Day Ten Lesson Plan [PDF]
Handouts
Informational Texts:
Handout 1: From China to Gold Mountain [PDF]
Handout 2: A Chinese Glossary[PDF]
Handout 3: Ghosts [PDF]
Download all ten lesson plans and handouts [.zip]
Literary Reading “Two Kinds”
Students will analyze family and cultural relationships and use evidence from the text to support their inferences.
Requires students to explore diversity, analyze multiple viewpoints, and understand social networks
Informational
Reading
“Arizona Gears Up for Protracted Immigration Fight”
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/soc.retirement/cr0
Students will synthesize information presented in different formats to generate a coherent understanding of an issue.
Requires students to reflect on current events and think critically about historical contexts
Writing and
Language
“Two Kinds,” “Battle Royal,” “House on Mango Street”
**http://www.angelfire.com/ma/MyGuardianangels/index9.html**
**http://users.aber.ac.uk/jpm/ellsa/t3/ellsa_twokinds3.html**
**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Kinds_(short_story)**
**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_(film)**
**http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=10&ved=0CGsQFjAJ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoachrock.wikispaces.com%2Ffile%2Fview%2FHouse%2Bon%2BMango%2BStreet.doc&ei=iODDUMi0Doiy8ASm44CYCg&usg=AFQjCNHtqjApX4Ybn9QJR5tBDsflgw931Q**
Students will write an account from another character’s point of view and develop narrative elements with well-chosen, revealing details.
Requires demonstration of knowledge of narrative, text-to-self connections, composition, and comparison/contrast of authors’ language use.
Students will interpret figures of speech and analyze their role in texts to compare how culture, family, race, and identity
are represented.
Speaking and
Listening
Students’ lives Students will exchange information to advance a discussion and to build on the input of others using the questions:
What does your family dream of for you? What do you want for yourself?
Requires students to compare their families and goals with the families Tan describes in her literary work.
Media and
Technology
Twitter 140-character summaries and/or dramatized scenes.
Requires knowledge of narrative plus incorporates new technology plus summarizing skills.
1. June Woo begins the novel by explaining the “Joy Luck Club.” She watches the mothers and explains, “They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds ‘joy luck’ is not a word, it does not exist” (p. 41). Does the novel argue that certain cultural concepts, like “joy luck,” cannot be translated? If so, why? If not, why not? Or, could the failure to translate provide the momentum of the novel? Explain the role of language and/or translation in the novel.
2. Research the details and circumstances of women’s life in 1930’s China, examining both poor and wealthy families. Bring this research to your reading of the novel. How do the stories of the mothers relate to the actual historical realities? Use your research to explain why Tan chose to portray the mothers through their particular stories. Decide whether this portrayal (whether historically accurate or fictionalized) enhances the power of the novel.
3. Ask students to perform a scene from the novel, from 1930’s China or from 1960’s America. They should write the dialogue and take the parts of all characters. The characters may be from the book or imagined. The scene can be produced at a student assembly and include a discussion afterward.
Level 2B Writing Targets.pdf
Level 2C Writing Targets.pdf
Level 3A Writing Targets.pdf
Level 4A Writing Targets.pdf
Level 4C Writing Targets.pdf
Level 5 Writing Targets.pdf
http://www.bifroest.demon.co.uk/misc/homophones-list.html
Homophones.pdf
The Joy Luck Club
Reader's Guide - About the Author
Amy Tan (b. 1952)
Amy Tan was born February 19, 1952, in Oakland, California. Her parents shared some of the dark history fictionalized in The Joy Luck Club. Her mother, Daisy, was born to a wealthy family and left Shanghai and a disastrous marriage right before the Communist takeover in 1949. She was forced to leave behind her three daughters. Tan's father, John, a Baptist minister and electrical engineer, also fled the civil war in China. Tan and her two brothers were raised in Santa Clara, California.
Tan was a good student. At age eight, her treatment of the theme "What the Library Means to Me" won her a transistor radio and mention in the local newspaper. When Tan was fourteen, her brother Peter and her father died within seven months of each other, both from brain tumors. A neurosurgeon gave no explanation other than bad luck. This twin tragedy spurred Daisy Tan to hoist anchor and move the family to Switzerland. After they returned to California, Tan was ready for college, where she eschewed her mother's wish for her to study medicine and studied literature instead. She met her husband, Lou DeMattei, on a blind date in Oregon while enrolled in one of the seven undergraduate institutions she attended. Tan followed him to San Jose, California, where she later earned an MA in linguistics in 1973.
While Tan was a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, her best friend was murdered. Shocked by the event, Tan left school and started working with children as a language development consultant. Her love of reading reawakened in 1985, when she read many woman novelists for the first time, including Louise Erdrich and Maxine Hong Kingston. Tan settled into a lucrative business-writing career, but restlessness led her to a writing workshop. Her second story, "Waiting Between the Trees," was noticed by a literary agent.
Tan started The Joy Luck Club two years after her first trip to China with her mother in 1987, and she completed it in less than five months. The book stayed on the bestseller list for nine months and has been translated into thirty-six languages. Tan cowrote the screenplay for the 1993 movie, and she and her husband appear in the movie as guests at the opening dinner party. Besides writing, she tours with the benefit cover band the Rock Bottom Remainders, which includes fellow writers Stephen King, James McBride, and Matt Groening. Her fifth novel, Saving Fish from Drowning, was published in 2005. Tan lives in northern California with her husband and dogs, Bubba and Lilli.
An Interview with Amy Tan
On August 7, 2006, Dana Gioia, former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, interviewed Amy Tan at her home in Berkeley, California. An excerpt from their conversation follows.
Dana Gioia: You were born in Oakland in a family where both parents had come from China. Were you raised bilingually?
Amy Tan: Until the age of five, my parents spoke to me in Chinese or a combination of Chinese and English, but they didn't force me to speak Mandarin. In retrospect, this was sad, because they believed that my chance of doing well in America hinged on my fluency in English. Later, as an adult, I wanted to learn Chinese. Now I make an effort when I am with my sisters, who don't speak English that well. It's such a wonderful part of me that is coming back, to try and speak that language.
DG: Would you explain the special symbolism of your title, The Joy Luck Club?
AT: I don't think joy and luck are specific to Chinese culture. Everybody wants joy and luck, and we all have our different notions about from where that luck comes. Many Chinese stores and restaurants have the word "luck" in there. The idea is that, just by using the word "luck" in names of things, you can attract more of it. Our beliefs in luck are related to hope. Some people who are without almost any hope in a situation still cling to luck.
DG: This is a great book about the American immigrant experience. Did you think about that theme consciously when writing the book?
AT: If I thought about this at all, it was the immigrant experience according to my mother and father. This influenced the way I took their immigrant story-the things that I rejected, the things that I thought were American. The basic notion of this country is that with self-determination, you can create who you are. That, in turn, allows an amazing freedom to a writer, because freedom is also creativity.
DG: Why is reading important?
AT: In childhood, reading provided a refuge for me, especially during difficult times. It provided me with the idea that I could find an ending that was different from what was happening at the time. Imagination is the closest thing that we have to compassion and empathy. When you read about the life of another person, you are part of their life for that moment. This is so vital, especially today, when we have so much misunderstanding across cultures and even within our own communities.
DG: What did you read as a child?
AT: I read every fairy tale I could lay my hands on at the public library. It was a wonderful world to escape to.
DG: Do you feel that your early love of fairy tales expressed itself inThe Joy Luck Club, or did you look on its content as realistic?
AT: As a minister, my father told us many stories from the Bible that were like fairy tales. Those stories can reflect very strong beliefs that Christians have, but they also have all the qualities that are wonderful about fairy tales. Life is larger than we think it is. Certain events can happen that we don't understand, and we can take it as faith in a particular area, or as superstition, or as a fairy tale, or something else. It's wonderful to come to a situation and think that it can be all kinds of possibilities. I look at what's happened to me as a published writer and, sometimes, I think it's a fairy tale.
http://quizlet.com/subject/joy-luck-club/
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/
Level 5
Bridging
Linguistic Complexity
• Rich descriptive discourse with complex sentences
• Cohesive and organized related ideas
Language Form and Complexity
• Compound, complex grammatical constructions (e.g., multiple phrases and clauses)
• A broad range of sentence patterns characteristic of particular content areas
Vocabulary Usage
• Technical and abstract content-area language, including content-specific collocations
• Words and expressions with shades of meaning across content areas
Level 4
Expanding
Linguistic Complexity
• Connected discourse with a variety of sentences
• Expanded related idea
Language Form and Complexity
• A variety of complex grammatical constructions (subject; predicate; prepositional phrases; gerunds/gerund phrases; infinitives)
• Sentence patterns characteristic of particular content areas (simple; compound; complex; compound/complex)
Vocabulary Usage
• Specific and some technical content-area language (e-portfolio; Goggle docs; e-files; e-mail; haiku LMS)
• Words or expressions with multiple meanings across content areas (euphemisms, aphorisms, allusions, allegory, archetypes, symbolism; connotation; denotation; metaphors; figurative language)
Level 5
Bridging
Linguistic Complexity
• Multiple, complex sentences
• Organized, cohesive, and coherent expression of ideas
Language Form and Complexity
• A variety of grammatical structures matched to purpose
• A broad range of sentence patterns characteristic of particular content areas
Vocabulary and Usage
• Technical and abstract content-area language, including content-specific collocations
• Words and expressions with shades of meaning across content areas
Level 4
Expanding
Linguistic Complexity
• Short, expanded, and some complex sentences
• Organized expression of ideas with emerging cohesion
Language Form and Complexity
• A variety of grammatical structures
• Sentence patterns characteristic of particular content areas
Vocabulary Usage
• Specific and some technical content-area language
• Words and expressions with expressive meaning through use of collocations and idioms across content areas
READING: LITERATURE
GRADES 9-10
KEY IDEAS AND DETAILS
RL.9-10.1. Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
Comprehension Check questions
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Note-Taking and Summarizing activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Standards Focus activities
RL.9-10.2. Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the
course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an
objective summary of the text.
Activating Prior Knowledge/Theme activities
Comprehension Check questions
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Note-Taking and Summarizing activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Standards Focus activities
RL.9-10.3. Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations)
develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the
theme.
Activating Prior Knowledge/Theme activities
Comprehension Check questions
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Standards Focus activities
CRAFT AND STRUCTURE
RL.9-10.4. Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including
figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on
meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or
informal tone).
Assessment Preparation activities
Standards Focus activities
Standards Focus activities
RL.9-10.5. Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise.
Comprehension Check questions
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Plot Map activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Prior Knowledge/Theme activities
Standards Focus activities
INTEGRATION OF KNOW LEDGE AND IDEAS
RL.9-10.9. Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work.
(Mythology)
Allusions/Terminology
Author Biography - Amy Tan
Comprehension Check questions
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Prior Knowledge/Theme activities
RANGE OF READING AND LEVEL OF TEXT COMPLEXITY
RL.9-10.10. By the end of grade 10, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and
poems, at the high end of the grades 9–10 text complexity band independently and proficiently.
WRITING
GRADES 9-10
PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF WRITING
W.9-10.4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are
appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined
in standards 1–3 above.)
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
W.9-10.5. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience.
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
W.9-10.6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared
writing products, taking advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display
information flexibly and dynamically.
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
RESEARCH TO BUILD AND PRESENT KNOWLEDGE
W.9-10.7. Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question (including
a self-generated question) or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate; synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
W.9-10.8. Gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources, using
advanced searches effectively; assess the usefulness of each source in answering the research
question; integrate information into the text selectively to maintain the flow of ideas, avoiding
plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
RANGE OF WRITING
W.9-10.10. Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences.
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
SPEAKING & LISTENING
GRADES 9-10
COMPREHENSION AND COLLABORATION
SL.9-10.1. Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9–10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
Prior Knowledge/Theme activities
Comprehension Check questions
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
PRESENTATION OF KNOW LEDGE AND IDEAS
SL.9-10.4. Present information, findings, and supporting evidence clearly, concisely, and logically such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, substance,
and style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and task.
Prior Knowledge/Theme activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
SL.9-10.5. Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
SL.9-10.6. Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate.
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Language
GRADES 9-10
CONVENTIONS OF STANDARD ENGLISH
L.9-10.1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.
Assessment Preparation activities
Comprehension Check questions
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Genre and Elements of Literature activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Prior Knowledge/Theme activities
Standards Focus activities
L.9-10.2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
Assessment Preparation activities
Comprehension Check questions
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Genre and Elements of Literature activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Prior Knowledge/Theme activities
Standards Focus activities
KNOW LEDGE OF LANGUAGE
L.9-10.3. Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.
Assessment Preparation activities
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Standards Focus activities
VOCABULARY ACQUISITION AND USE
L.9-10.4. Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases
based on GR AGES 9–10 RE ADING AND CONTENT, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies.
Common Core Standards Alignment—The Joy Luck Club Literature Guide; Grades 10-12
Assessment Preparation activities
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Standards Focus activities
L.9-10.5. Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.
Assessment Preparation activities
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Standards Focus activities
L.9-10.6. Acquire and use accurately general academic and domain-specific words and phrases,
sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at the college and career readiness level;
demonstrate independence in gathering vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase
important to comprehension or expression.
Allusions/Terminology
Assessment Preparation activities
Essay and Writing prompts and activities
Genre and Elements of Literature activities
Pre-Reading and Post-Reading ideas and activities
Standards Focus activities
. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and non-print texts.
7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and non-print texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.
8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
9. Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles.
10. Students whose first language is not English make use of their first language to develop competency in the English language arts and to develop understanding of content across the curriculum.
11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).
CCSS Strand
Text Resource
Literary Reading “Two Kinds” Students will analyze family and cultural relationships and use evidence from the text to
support their inferences.
http://www.angelfire.com/ma/MyGuardianangels/index9.html
Learning Target
Requires students to explore diversity, analyze multiple viewpoints, and understand social networks
Discussion Questions
- Which story is your favorite and why? Do you prefer the stories set in China or California?
- How are the notions of balance (yin and yang) and energy flow (feng shui) an important theme in the novel? Does the Chinese notion of balance and flow translate to the characters' lives in America?
- The Joy Luck Club was written as a collection of short stories. Is the order important? Could this have been told as a single story? What would that change?
- In your experience, does the book reinforce or shatter stereotypes of Chinese culture?
- By telling a story from the perspective of Chinese immigrants and first-generation Americans, what does the book reveal about American culture?
- Tan has said that she wishes to break from "the ghetto of ethnic literature." Does The Joy Luck Club cross from the ethnic to the universal?
- Although June is not sure why her mother gives her the jade necklace, she assumes it's because of her humiliation by Waverly. Is she right?
- How do the struggles of the daughters mirror the tragedies of their mothers? What does this suggest about the relationships between parents and children?
- Ying-ying sees herself as both a tiger and a ghost. Why does she use these characterizations? How would Lena? How would they be different?
- The "broken English" of the mothers is often more colorful than the "perfect English" of their daughters. How does the way the mothers choose to express themselves reflect their identities? What is lost in translation?
- How do the mothers decide to use their mah jong winnings? Does this show assimilation? Why, or why not?
- The ritual of mah jong is central to the story. What rituals do American women perform that reflect culture and identity?
"They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds 'joy luck' is not a word, it does not exist."- Jing-mei "June" Woo in The Joy Luck Club
Prepared by Robert F. Cohen, Ph.D.
Spring 2007
chabudwo: soup
dyansyin: food
hong mu: wood
Joy Luck Club -Major Characters
Suyuan's story is told through her daughter. She was forced to leave her twin babies on the road in China while fleeing the Japanese invasion.
June is a sensitive child whose mother wants her to become a piano prodigy. After learning the truth about her mother's past, she travels to China to find her lost sisters.
At age nine, An-mei joins her widowed mother, who is exiled as a rich man's fourth wife. Her mother commits suicide. In the U.S., An-mei questions her faith when her youngest son drowns.
Timid Rose is overwhelmed by American choices, but she finds conviction in the midst of a bewildering divorce.
As a child, Lindo outwits her mother-in-law to escape her arranged marriage. Later, she brags about her American-born daughter but also longs for Waverly to notice their similarities.
A chess champion as a child, Waverly grows up to become a successful tax attorney. She worries about her mother's opinion of her white fiancé.
When her philandering husband dies, Ying-ying leaves her wealthy family and starts over as a shopgirl. She marries an American merchant and emigrates but suffers from episodes of depression as an adult.
Generous Lena shares her mother's powers of intuition but remains powerless to act on them. The prickly division of household expenses reveals the impoverishment of her marriage.
Click on the word film below to see the video clips.
==Films==
The Joy Luck Club
Reader's Guide - Historical Context
The Life and Times of Amy Tan
1920s
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forms, 1921.
Chiang Kai-shek unites the Nationalists, 1928.
1930s
The Long March helps Mao Tse-tung consolidate power, 1934-35.
Japan launches a full-scale war with China, 1937.
Nanking, the newly established capital of China, falls to Japan, December 13, 1937.
1940s
Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. China and America form an alliance, 1941.
The People's Republic of China is established. Daisy Tan boards the last boat out of Shanghai safely, 1949.
1950s
Socialist realism becomes the popular artistic form, deemed most appropriate for the new republic in China.
Amy Tan is born in Oakland, California, 1952.
1960s
Chairman Mao Zedong launches the Cultural Revolution. Bourgeoisie values and an older generation of artists and intellectuals are attacked and killed.
Amy Tan wins her first writing contest, 1960.
Tan family moves to Montreux, Switzerland, 1968.
1970s
Nixon is the first U.S. president to visit China, 1972.
Maxine Hong Kingston publishes The Woman Warrior, 1975.
Mao Zedong's death ends the Cultural Revolution; the "Gang of Four" take the fall for its chaos, 1977.
Diplomatic ties established between China and America, 1979.
1980s
Maya Lin's design for Vietnam Veterans Memorial is chosen by an NEA-funded design competition, 1981.
Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, the first feature film to show the Forbidden City, wins nine Oscars, 1987.
The Joy Luck Club is published, 1989.
1990s
Breakthrough decade for Chinese-American fiction and movies. Tan publishes four more books.
Amy Tan's essay "Mother Tongue" is chosen for Best American Essays, 1991.
The Joy Luck Club, cowritten by Amy Tan and Ronald Bass, is released as a feature film, 1993.
2000s
Sagwa becomes a PBS cartoon series for children, based on Tan's book, Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat, 2000.
Tan's fifth novel, Saving Fish from Drowning, is published, 2005.
World War II and San Francisco 's Chinatown
The War
The Joy Luck Club is set in two places: China in the 1930s and 1940s and San Francisco's Chinatown from the 1960s through the 1980s. Since Chinatown was a haven within an isolated country, the experiences of Tan's fictionalized daughters differ sharply from their mothers' generation, which was displaced by war.
The turn of the twentieth century hailed massive upheavals for China, with the end of the Imperial dynastic system and the opening of China to global influences. These changes led to civil wars between the Nationalists and the Communists. The leader of the Nationalist Party, or the Kuomintang, was Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao Tse-tung led the Communist Party. The Long March, a 6,000-mile-long retreat of the Red Army in 1934-35, enabled Mao to consolidate his power. (Survivors of the march are heroes to this day.)
The Chinese peasantry was lifted by Mao's doctrine, which encouraged his soldiers to "not take a single needle or a piece of thread from the masses"-masses often terrorized by the nationalist Kuomintang. The Nationalists, who were armed with the need to combat Western hegemony, clashed with the Communists, who were strengthened by their appeal for the many rural poor.
These two groups formed fragile alliances to fight a guerilla war against waves of Japanese invaders in the 1930s. Although few in number, the Japanese gained control of major Chinese cities and coasts.
As the United States entered World War II in 1941, the marriage of convenience between the Kuomintang and Communists against Japan was falling apart. The U.S. backed the Nationalists, although corruption among Kuomintang generals diverted supplies and information to the Japanese. This corruption and political instability, coupled with the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, drove many Chinese to emigrate.
The Neighborhood
These Chinese took the already well-worn route to California, which to this day retains the largest Chinese population in the United States. The Chinese still refer to San Francisco as "Old Gold Mountain," because the first wave of émigrés had come through the Port of San Francisco at the start of the Gold Rush. They had formed tight networks and built "Little Shanghai," because exclusionary laws made it difficult for Asian immigrants to assimilate or gain citizenship.
For decades the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 had limited imported labor. The World War II alliance between China and the United States became instrumental in repealing this and other exclusionary laws. The immigrant population slowly shifted from male sojourners to permanent citizens.
Even though racial bias persisted in immigration law until at least 1965, families thrived in Chinatown, with its familiar Chinese customs, food, and merchandise. By the 1960s Chinatown's seedy intrigue existed only in movies, and it became an alluring tourist destination-an exotic island of a different culture in the middle of a major American city, complete with temples, fortune cookie factories, and, of course, Chinese restaurants. The famous Chinatown gate went up in 1970. Nine years later, diplomatic ties were reestablished between the two countries, making it easier for Chinese-American families to reunite.
READWRITETHINK CONNECTION
Lisa Storm Fink, RWT
In the essay “Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan explains that she “began to write stories using all the Englishes I grew up with.” How these “different Englishes” or even a language other than English contribute to identity is a crucial issue for adolescents. In “Exploring Language and Identity: Amy Tan’s ‘Mother Tongue’ and Beyond,” students explore this issue by brainstorming the different languages they use in speaking and writing, and when and where these languages are appropriate. Students write in journals about a time when someone made an assumption about them based on their use of language, and they share their writing with the class. Students then read and discuss Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue.” Finally, students write a literacy narrative describing two different languages they use and when and where they use these languages.http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/ lesson-plans/exploring-language-identity-mother-910.html
The Joy Luck Club Jeopardy Jeopardy Review Game
www.superteachertools.com/jeopardy/usergames/.../game130025563...===The Joy Luck Club Jeopardy Jeopardy Review Game===
www.superteachertools.com/jeopardy/
Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club was written as a collection of short stories, but the tales of memory, fate, and self-discovery interlock to create a colorful mural that reads like a novel. All four sections open with a Chinese fable, then shift to the stories of four pairs of mothers and daughters. The tone switches from mundane to magical to darkly humorous. The tales, particularly those set in China, are by turns beautiful and harrowing.
The first story begins two months after Jing-mei "June" Woo loses her mother, Suyuan, to a brain aneurysm. Her mother's best friends-June's "aunties"-invite June to take Suyuan's place at their mah jong table so she can sit at the East, "where everything begins."
Suyuan Woo had invented the original Joy Luck Club in China, before the Japanese invaded the city of Kweilin. They had used the group to help shield themselves from the harshness of war. As they feasted on whatever they could find, they transformed their stories of hardship into ones of good fortune.
After Suyuan reaches the United States, she resurrects the Joy Luck Club with three other Chinese émigrés, and the four reinvent themselves in San Francisco 's Chinatown. These four mothers hope the mix of "American circumstances with Chinese character" will give their daughters better lives.
In each section of the novel, June recounts her late mother's fantastic tales on evenings after "every bowl had been washed and the Formica table had been wiped down twice." Every time Suyuan tells her daughter about Kweilin, she invents a new ending. But one night she reveals the real ending-how she lost her twin daughters while fleeing the Japanese invasion: "Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies."
After her mother's death, June realizes that she had not fully understood her mother's past or her intentions. She journeys to China to discover what her mother had lost there. She is feverish to find out who she is, where she came from, and what future she can create-so she can finally join the Joy Luck Club.
http://www.pps.k12.or.us/files/curriculum/Text_Marking_StrategyFicNonSSSciNUMBER_CIRCLE_UNDERLINE(2).pdf
The American Dream Lessons
Lesson Plan: Introduction to the American Dream Unit - Stereotypical Definition of "The American Dream" and "Where I'm From" poem by George Ella Lyon2. Lesson Plan: Introduction to the American Dream Unit - Diversity of the American Dream and Analysis of Song Lyrics 3. Lesson Plan: Introduction to The Great Gatsby - Internet Scavenger Hunt4. Lesson Plan: Introduction to The Joy Luck Club - PowerPoint Presentation and Silenced Dialogue Activity 5. Lesson Plan: Conclusion to the American Dream Unit - Synthesis of and Response to the American Dream UnitJackie Diorio6. Lesson Plan: The Great Gatsby - Using Vocabulary in The Great Gatsby7. Lesson Plan: The Great Gatsby - Expanding Creatively on The Great Gatsby8. Lesson Plan: The Great Gatsby - The Great Gatsby Flapper Lesson9. Lesson Plan: The Great Gatsby - Comparing The Great Gatsby: The Movie and the Book10. Lesson Plan: The Great Gatsby - Knowing, Wanting, and Learning with GatsbyMike Cheng11. Lesson Plan: The Joy Luck Club - Research Paper on Asian Americans and the American Dream12. Lesson Plan: The Joy Luck Club - In-Class Analysis and Discussion13. Lesson Plan: The Joy Luck Club - Tableau Activity14. Lesson Plan: The Joy Luck Club - Unit Paper Introduction and Thesis15. Lesson Plan: The Joy Luck Club - Supplementary Materials on Asian Americans and the American Dream